While the disclosed embodiments are particularly directed to digital document processing and review and described with specific reference thereto, it is to be appreciated the various embodiments may have usefulness in other fields and applications.
Electronic communication and digital documents have become standard document formats replacing or enhancing earlier modes of communication. For example, business, education and science use electronic or digital communications. These digital media are commonly created through structured text/graphics editor programs including MICROSOFT WORD, POWERPOINT, EXCEL, etc. These programs offer editing capabilities for both text and graphic material. While such text/graphics editors have met with significant commercial success and usage, existing implementations have limitations. Particularly, such editors require the creation and editing of material to take place within the system via manual operations. Due to these limitations existing text/graphics editors are not able to meet the demands of workers employing different modes of work, such as working with physical documents, particularly for editing and review.
It has been determined that knowledge workers often print documents so they can visually examine content located in different places within the documents—in parallel. They also print to compare content across documents. Paper makes the comparison process easy because related content can be laid out next to each other. Also, non-related content can be filtered out. For example, people can cut bits of content out of a paper document and lay the bits out on a table to examine them in parallel. They can also fold paper to filter non-related content and therefore show related content next to each other. In accordance with aspects of the disclosed system and methods, as users read through a document, they can employ the disclosed system and methods to mark areas of content they wish to compare. When the user(s) is ready to compare the content, the marked content is arranged into a summary window so it can be visually examined it in parallel (e.g., side-by-side, in seriatim, etc.).
Current software tools allow limited ability to compare related content, and the process for comparing content is laborious. For example, in MS Word or similar programs operating on a computing platform, to compare content that is spatially separated within the same document, the user could open the file multiple times (to show different windows or views into the file), and choose the “show side by side” option. This creates a pane of tiled windows. Within each of these windows, the user must remember where the content to be compared is located, and scroll to that content to show it in the windows. Alternatively, a user could use a split window option in MS-Word but cannot then display portions of the document in a side-by-side relationship.
As disclosed herein the system and methods provide a way to compare digital content by leveraging the affordances that paper provides for manipulation of pages and portions thereof.
Disclosed in embodiments herein is a system to compare digital document content, comprising: a device having a processor to execute programmatic instructions; a memory, operatively associated with the processor, for storing data relating to the selection of each of multiple distinct regions of information with the digital document content, each in association with a user-specified marker; and a display, said display including a dynamically updateable comparing window said comparing window depicting at least a plurality of the regions and the marker associated therewith to facilitate comparison of the regions by a viewer.
Further disclosed in embodiments herein is a method to compare digital document content, comprising: selecting a first region within a document for comparison, said first region being visually depicted as having been selected, and said system automatically assigning a first marker to the first region; selecting a second region within a document for comparison, said second region being visually depicted as having been selected, and said system automatically assigning a second, unique marker to the second region; and presenting a comparing window on a visual display, said comparing window depicting the first region and the second region to facilitate comparison of the at least two regions by a viewer.
Also disclosed herein is a method to examine portions of digital document content, comprising: a user selecting a plurality of document regions for comparison, said regions each being visually depicted (highlight, color, sidebar marker) as having been selected, and said system automatically assigning a unique marker to each selected region; providing a user-specified tag to each selected region; and presenting, to the user, a comparison window on a visual display, said comparison window depicting at least two selected document regions therein, along with the associated markers, to facilitate comparison of the regions by the user, wherein the regions presented for comparison are based, at least in part, on at least one common characteristic (color, tag text, etc.) of the user-specified tag
The various embodiments described herein are not intended to limit the disclosure to those embodiments described. On the contrary, the intent is to cover all alternatives, modifications, and equivalents as may be included within the spirit and scope of the various embodiments and equivalents set forth. For a general understanding, reference is made to the drawings. In the drawings, like references have been used throughout to designate identical or similar elements. It is also noted that the drawings may not have been drawn to scale and that certain regions may have been purposely drawn disproportionately so that the features and aspects could be properly depicted.